So, in an effort to organize much of my library of music, i need to transfer a large amount (gigs worth) back and forth between my Macbook Pro (w/ Leopard) and my Vista PC. Just wondering what is the fast and easiest way to do such a task, Im not interesting in dealing with the hassles of usb drives, external drives, and burning dvds. I'm thinking along the lines of either a USB transfer cable, an ethernet crossover cable, or over a network router. Unfortunately Firewire isn't an option due to my pc not supporting it. Just wondering if any of you gerbils tried any of these and what would you guys recommend?

well the obvious answer is a network cable and a windows file share... either with a crossover cable or switch, doesn't really matter.

If you were going mac to mac or mac to nix you could use rsync to synchronise the directories. That's a much nicer way of doing it since it's easy to restart the transfer if it gets stopped for some reason and future syncs only transfer the changes.

I'm not a mac expert but if you can mount windows file share to a directory on the mac I guess you could actually use rsync...

So if you mounted the share to something like:

/home/user/$SHARE

you could type the following in the terminal:

rsync -av /home/user/$MUSIC_DIR/ /home/user/$SHARE/

That will copy all the new files from $MUSIC_DIR to $SHARE (and will update any files that have changed) NB the "/" at then end of each path is important! There are loads of other options for rsync (like compression and encryption for going across the net, backing up files that are updated and excluding specific file types).

If there is some kind of problem during the transfer that causes it to stop then just restart it and watch it continue from the point of the file it got interrupted at (very handy when transferring very large files!)

Thresher wrote:Network sharing will be slow, but you can in fact store the music on a networked drive and do all your updating from whatever computer you like.

Well, if he has gigabit NIC's in each of his machine, it won't be so slow.

To the OP, I would set up a wireless/wired network. This entails getting a wireless router, but they aren't very expensive. Unless you go with an 802.11n wireless network, then there is a small additional cost. You'll have to let us know if your Macbook Pro has an integrated 802.11n adapter or any kind of wireless adapter. If that the case, then your only cost will be the router and the network cable to hook up the Vista PC if you want it to be wired, since it's stationary I'm assuming.

Microsoft also has a tool called SyncToy. It's free to download from their Web site, and it's pretty powerful for such a small and simple application. It only works on Vista and XP, but it's still a good tool.

EDIT: To moderator, this thread should probably be moved to networking.

The best things in life are free.http://www.gentoo.orgGuy 1: Surely, you will fold with me.Guy 2: Alright, but don't call me Shirley.

Macs make it trivial to store stuff on a network drive and never have to muss with the app. Unlike shortcuts in windows, the Finder and most apps treat aliases the same as folders - if I removed ~/Music/iTunes and replaced it with an alias of the same name that points at a network share, every time I open iTunes, it'll automatically follow the alias. I don't have to worry about changing a software config (though it's handy to know that you can).

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

I do have a draft-n router, a DLink DIR-625, and the Macbook pro is a santa rosa chipset so it does have draft-n capabilities. I just did a quick search on google and found this. I was able to transfer files from the MBP to the PC using an ethernet cord and the router as a go between. While the MBP was discoverable to Vista, and i was able to off load some files, Leopard couldn't find my PC connected through the network, even with file sharing turned on (on) both systems. Any ideas on that?

It going at about ~7 MB/s, which im guessing isn't a limitation of ethernet, but it's fast enough i suppose. 17 gigs in 40 minutes is good enough.

Back in the olden days (as recently as a couple weeks ago) when I had a Windows box, we had to do the above to get OS X to see it. You really *only* need to do the registry edit and reboot the PC with Leopard.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.

Back in the olden days (as recently as a couple weeks ago) when I had a Windows box, we had to do the above to get OS X to see it. You really *only* need to do the registry edit and reboot the PC with Leopard.